Environmental Analysis Lab (MSL236)

Jay Racela, Lecturer and Lab Supervisor

Over the past year, the Lab had two major events that improved our teaching and research capabilities. First off, with the help of the Science Center, we purchased a brand new Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS), and secondly with major assistance from Drew Jones and Hopkins Memorial Forest (HMF), we replaced the wind monitoring sensors and the datarelaydevice on our 50-m MET tower on the Taconic Ridge.

The new AAS replaced an old inoperable instrument that allowed water contamination into the instrument’s computer.  With the new AAS, the lab can more easily analyze aqueous samples and compare all resulting data, further, the instrument’s smaller footprint and ease of maintenance make using it a welcome change.  With the ability to reproducibly detect various metals to ppb levels, students, faculty, Envi and Chem classes, and long-term research projects, can be assured of the results.

Installed in the fall of 2004, the Taconic Ridge 50-m MET tower has experienced all kinds of weather conditions including hurricane force winds and ice storms, with nary a worry.  In October 2016, one of the wind speed sensors stopped functioning, and soon after a wind direction vane followed suit, then another wind speed sensor. This left us with only one 13-year-old wind speed sensor at 50-m, and one 13-year-old wind direction sensor at 40-m, keeping us rolling the dice as to whether they would also break down, rendering the station completely functionless.  Using funds from the Envi lab’s field research account plus a generous addition from the HMF lab research account, we hired a two-person crew to help us (Drew Jones, David Dethier, Brad Wakoff, and Jason Mativi) lower the tower with a gin-pole and 12000-lb winch, purchase and install new sensors and a required, new data-relay device, then raise the tower back up again.  Currently the tower is in almost perfect working order and will continue to provide us with long-term wind energy data as both a research and teaching tool in renewable energy classes and exercises.

The MET tower has continuously monitored the wind speeds at 50m above the Taconic ridge since 2004 and the overall average speed in this time period is just over 7 m/s (15.7 mph). Since current utility-scale wind turbines (>100kW) require at least 6 m/s average wind speeds at 80m, the MET tower site is hypothetically viable for a utility-scale wind turbine. https://sites.williams.edu/envilab/